Exclamations and their discourse effects in Japanese

Hitomi Hirayama

doi:10.3765/plsa.v6i1.4948

Abstract

This paper discusses two kinds of sentences with nante that can express exclamations in Japanese. I show that these two nante exclamations show the contrast observed between sentence exclamations and wh-exclamatives in English (Rett 2011). Based on the data, I propose that nante in the two types of sentences can be analyzed in a unified way: nante is like what in English in that it can range over a variety of categories. The semantic composition shows that the two nante sentences have different sentence types and hence different discourse effects (Farkas & Roelofsen 2017). One type is a marked assertion, and the other is a bonafide exclamative. I show the contrast using the discourse model in Farkas & Bruce (2010): the exclamative updates the speaker’s commitment, not the potential future common ground.

Highlights

Natural languages provide us with multiple ways to achieve the same goal: To ask whether it is raining, for example, one can use a polar question (‘Is it raining?’), a tag question (‘It’s raining, isn’t it?’), or a high negation polar question (‘Isn’t it raining?’)
This paper investigates the discourse effects of two kinds of exclamations in Japanese that share the same expression nante
Looking at the case with a sentence exclamation: (2), the continuation where the speaker explicitly states that they expected that John would bake delicious desserts is infelicitous, which is not the case when a wh-exclamative is used

Summary

Introduction

Natural languages provide us with multiple ways to achieve the same goal: To ask whether it is raining, for example, one can use a polar question (‘Is it raining?’), a tag question (‘It’s raining, isn’t it?’), or a high negation polar question (‘Isn’t it raining?’). This paper investigates the discourse effects of two kinds of exclamations in Japanese that share the same expression nante While they both convey the speaker’s surprise, they are based on different speaker’s expectations and behave differently toward challenge by the addressee using no. (2) Sentence Exclamation: Non-scalar A: (Wow,) John bakes delicious desserts! Looking at the case with a sentence exclamation: (2), the continuation where the speaker explicitly states that they expected that John would bake delicious desserts is infelicitous, which is not the case when a wh-exclamative is used. The difference comes from the fact that the sentence exclamation targets a non-scalar component as the speaker’s expectation. B. Taro-wa oisii dezaato-o tukuru-to omotteita kedo kore-wa kitai Taro-TOP delicious dessert-ACC make-COMP thought but this-TOP expectation izyoo da more than COP ‘I thought Taro would make delicious desserts but this is beyond my expectation.’. After the utterance with the sentence-final nante (1a), only (4a) is a possible continuation, while the exclamation with the intra-sentential nante (1b) is compatible with both continua-

The following abbreviations are used in the glosses

Conclusion and future directions